In the United States, what is now known as broadcast television began in January 1928, when two experimental television stations were founded in New York City. The first regularly scheduled television program was broadcast from a suburban Washington, D.C., station in June of that year. Thirteen years later, the television advertising industry was born when a ten-second advertisement for clocks and watches was aired prior to a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies on Jul. 1, 1941. Today, advertising on television and other video platforms is both pervasive and profitable: As of 2016, it is estimated that global revenue from television advertising alone exceeded $175 billion, and video advertising is now found in streamed video, programs stored on digital versatile discs (“DVD”) or other hard formats, social networks, and nearly every other platform from which video files may be broadcasted, aired, streamed or otherwise distributed for consumption.
Currently, video advertisements, or “commercials,” are frequently inserted at regular intervals into television programs. In many such programs, commercial breaks are aired every five to eight minutes, and one or more commercials for goods or services, or public service announcements, are shown to viewers during such breaks. The times of such breaks are often selected with a goal of maximizing viewer engagement with the commercials. For example, television producers and content creators often synchronize breaks with a plot of a program that is previously recorded, or with natural breaks in a live program (e.g., turnovers, timeouts, ends of innings or periods in sporting events), and air one or more commercials during such breaks. Providers of goods or services that wish to maximize their advertising reach may pay a premium to have their commercials aired during breaks in programs that are generally popular, or breaks in programs that are popular to demographics that are known or believed to be interested in one or more of their goods or services. The jockeying for position by such entities has been proven to be very lucrative to content providers: for example, a thirty-second advertisement aired during a break in Super Bowl LI cost over $5 million.
Similarly, many network sites that host streaming video services will air one or more commercials prior to streaming requested video content such as movies, documentaries or brief clips of relevant news or sports items. Such commercials may be selected at random, or based on information that may be known regarding a computer device on which the video content is to be displayed (e.g., a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop or a television), or regarding a user of the computer device, which may be determined based on an Internet Protocol address of the computer device, “cookies” stored on the computer device, or any other attributes or settings of the computer device. Alternatively, such commercials may be chosen by contract. For example, one or more local vendors may contract to have a brief commercial shown prior to video features that are aired by a network site (e.g., a web site) associated with a local newspaper, while one or more national or international business entities may contract to have brief commercials shown prior to video features that are aired by network sites associated with major news sources.
Existing methods for selecting and displaying video advertisements to viewers are occasionally plagued with a number of limitations. For example, many viewers of a television program are annoyed when a plot is broken for extended durations, in order to air one or more commercials. Such viewers commonly use these occasions to “channel surf,” to obtain refreshments, to use a rest room, or to complete one or more other tasks that are unrelated to the television program that is being aired. In some instances, viewers will record a television program on a digital video recorder (“DVR”) or other device or system so that they may watch the television program at a later time, and may advance (“fast-forward”) through the commercials to return to the program without delay. While some advertisements are selected for display during breaks in programming based on predicted attributes of viewers who might be watching the programming, whether content of an advertisement is relevant to content of the programming is never considered. Furthermore, because video content of a commercial is typically unrelated to video content of programming being aired, a commercial must be set off from programming, e.g., by one or more transitions (such as a “fade-to-black” and a “fade-from-black”), and can never be seamlessly integrated into the actual programming. Likewise, and also because content of a commercial is typically unrelated to content of programming during which the commercial is aired, a viewer of the programming is never permitted to request an advertisement for any goods or services that are depicted in the programming. Instead, the viewer must independently research such goods or services (e.g., via one or more Internet searches) on different platforms, and either divert his or her attention from the programming, or wait for a break in the programming, to conduct such research. As is discussed above, breaks in programming occur only at times selected by a producer of the programming, and only include advertisements that the producer of the programming has chosen to air during such breaks.